


Peril

by baeberiibungh



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AU, Addict!Will, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood, Discipline, M/M, Masochism, Mental Health Issues, Religious Fanaticism, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sadism, Scars, Self-Flagellation, canning, priest!Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 13:36:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13952700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeberiibungh/pseuds/baeberiibungh
Summary: Will is a disturbed man, looking for redemption. Hannibal is the priest who has a unique method of helping Will...(Re-uploading again for recovery sake)





	Peril

“I did not mean to take it father, I really didn’t, but I saw it and I immediately wanted it. It was like if I got it, I could become the happiest person in the whole world, and I was that, for the next five minutes, and the happiness diminished and so I took some more, but it is never enough, it’s never enough to feed my thirst, my hunger, I do not know what to do anymore. Please help me father, please,” cried the boy, thin and weak, hands barely larger than a twig, dirty black curls on his head that desperately need a haircut, clothes that lay hanging off him and the shivering that seemed to be ratting him right to his core.

“You put your soul in peril Will my child. And that is a grave thing to do, something that will pull you away further from God’s good grace. Your soul is beautiful, and it needs to stay pure and away from the Devil’s temptation to be let into his heaven, so come child, you must fight this, you must fight it with all you have got,” Father Lecter said to the small weeping child, not really a child, but a young man, and even now reeking of the booze that he drank after being told not to at the last confession.

“But father, it sends the nightmares away, it send the bad memories away, it lets me cope with my life, please father I need it,” Will chokes out.

“What you need is God’s love shinning through, you need his forgiveness to cleanse your soul, you need to prove to God that you are worthy of his love. So repent my son, repent at his feet, repent on your knees, show your worth in the house of the good Lord. Show him your love,” Hannibal intoned in a serious voice that wavered through a veil of intensity.

Will sniffs like a small boy at that. He knows what he needs, that he wants that too, to feel the cleansing go through his body and feel pure, if only for a few hours, before the amber liquid calls to him again, clamour for attention, taunt him with its sparkle and perfume and Will gives in easily, getting sloppily drunk on corner tables and goes off somewhere that doesn’t hurt, that doesn’t feel like hurt, where even the concept of hurt is nonexistent.

And then he will wake up, thrown outside while still unconscious, and he will smell of vomit and the garbage he had been lying on and sometimes piss, sometimes someone else’s spend and he will be filled with enough loathing to want to strangle himself. Each day he would promise himself that he would stop, that he could be brave, that he could resist, but alas, he gives in anyway and when the going gets too much, the thirst unquenched even after a bottle, Will will go to the church that lay on his way to home and ask for forgiveness, and confess to Father Lecter.

Father Lecter will console and cajole him to do the right thing, to purify himself and then he will sit in the pews for father to be done so that both can go to the father’s chamber together. After that, it is a routine, so much so that Will walks on autopilot when he reaches the room. At first he takes off his jacket, followed by his shirt and undershirt. Initially, he uses to keep his pants on, but steadily Hannibal let him know that disrobing fully was the way to go, drawing the comparison of a new born baby, pure and innocent. So Will would take all his clothes off, put them into a pile by the closed door and sit on his haunches, knee into the cold ground and hands on his thigh while he faced the wall and let Hannibal at his back.

Father Lecter had a few implements for such purification. He had two canes, thick and thin, a length of rope, knotted at places, and a whip that was long and sang like a bird when it flew behind Will. At first Father Lecter would hand him the one to use that day, for Will to use them for the first few hits, and once when Will’s shaking subsided and he found himself slipping into a kind of trance, Father Hannibal would take over for him, laying waste to his back, drawing blood and chocked gasps from Will while tears fell in a steady stream. Sometimes, much to his everlasting shame, Will would come to pain and he used to feel guilty over that, but then Father Lecter told him it was just his body expelling his sins in the only way it rightfully knew and so Will didn’t fight that anymore.

After Father Lecter had deemed that Will had been purified enough, he would take a clean rag and clean his back, using a bit of holy water for this action and Will would feel so clean, so pure, as if every little dirty though, every shameful act, every crime he had ever done had been removed from his ledger, as if he is worthy to love God and ask for God’s love in return. He would feel as if he were floating and when Father Lecter would touch a glass of water to his lips, he would sip it down in gratitude, his hands clutching onto Hannibal’s hand holding the glass. 

And then he will go home and be ok for a day or two, be able to resist the pull and then he will start to smell his own stench again, be suddenly aware of the stark colours of the world only in dark hues and Will would pick up a tumbler again. But, for some months now, Will found that the pull of drinking has changed. At first it was so that he could get over his life, be able to forget how bad it was. Now it called to him for how he could go to Father again, and how Father will make him pure again, be placed on the corner of his room and the evil whipped right out of him. It was devious, he knew, to manipulate the helpful father and the time and effort he spent on his redemption, but he was becoming an addict of another kind. 

He now found the spread of pain through his back and mutilating his back more than it had already become, as equally heady as the first sip after not drinking for a few days. So he kept on drinking just so that he would have an excuse to go to Father Lecter and Father welcomed him always, with his kind smile and mad eyes shining at Will. Such devotion, both though of the other, such devotion, how can God not be proud?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.


End file.
